Chimeric antigen receptor engineered cells and their clinical application in infectious disease

Abstract

Abstract Infectious diseases remain a major burden on global public health and socio‐economic stability. Despite that great progress has been made in the development of drugs, the resulting drug resistance remains a major problem. Patients with no response or recurrence need alternative treatment strategies. The chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy that achieves great success in treating cancer provides new opportunities for treating infectious diseases. It has a series of advantages in targeting, efficacy, and durability. In this review, we discussed different CAR strategies for infectious diseases, including human immunodeficiency virus, viral hepatitis, human cytomegalovirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, influenza A virus and Aspergillus germlings. Among all these infectious diseases, CAR therapy for HIV has been the most studied, so in this review, we mainly reported on recent developments in preclinical and clinical studies on anti‐HIV CARs and highlighted their structural evolution. The current advantages, challenges and potential improvements of CAR therapy in infectious diseases were discussed as well. We also compared CAR‐T cells applied to tumours and infectious diseases in the final part.

Keywords

• CAR therapy
• human immunodeficiency virus
• infectious disease
• SARS‐CoV‐2
• viral hepatitis